Full oft the wanderer, fortune's child,
Benighted, sad, and doomed to roam,
Beholds with joy thy aspect mild,

That tells of happiness and home,

And guides him onward 'mid the trackless wild.
Oft, too, the sea-boy marks thy beam,
When ocean sleeps in peaceful calm;
While o'er its breast thy gentle gleam,

Plays wanton, and with sacred charm,
Lulls the rapt soul in fancy's pleasing dream.
And oft, sweet star, at even-tide,

When all around is hushed to rest;
My thoughts ascend and pensive glide,
To distant climes and regions blest,

Where wo-worn care and grief would gladly hide.

And fancy whispers in mine ear,

That those which once were here beloved;

To friendship and affection dear,

Now from this fleeting scene removed,

Repose, bright star, in thy etherial sphere!'

Mr. T. has our best wishes for his success.

He has evidently powers worthy of cultivation; and with such principles and pure morality as these poems evince, we are sure those powers in their most advanced state of improvement, will always be applied so as to subserve the cause of religion, patriotism, and humanity.

In the poems of Dr. Farmer we seem to recognize the playful effusions of an elegant and cultivated mind. With less of feeling and equal purity of sentiment, there is more of classical allusion, and more variety of language than in those just mentioned. As far as we may guess a man's character by his writings, we should say, Dr. F. is an accomplished gentleman, accustomed from his childhood to polished society, and familiar with the elegant literature of the day.

His volume is very miscellaneous in its contents, so much so that we do not know how to select any thing which can be fairly called a specimen of the whole. His minor pieces are all in good taste, and are most easily extracted: we shall therefore give one

or two.

TO NATURE.

'Hail! lovely stranger, clad in verna! flowers,
Nymph of the cavern wild and mountain hoar;
The times have past since I beheld thy bowers,
When listless childhood spent the fleeting hours,

Where Schuylkill's glassy wave reflects the woodland shore.

Through youthful memory's faintly shaded screen,
They still appear'd as lovely as before:

For flowers though dead, and sloping hills not green,
Are cloth'd in verdure when

distance seen,

And Fancy lights her lamp at Meinory's waning store:

Then, Nature, I beheld thee in a dream!

The briar-rose clamber'd o'er thy rocky throne,
And clustering bent above a murmuring stream:
So childhood bends attentive to the theme

Of haunted cell, where dismal torches gleam,
Or wizards dance, or dead men dwell alone.
This rifted fragment o'er the deep

In awful grandeur lowers;
Within yon cavern fairies sleep
On Ocean's sparkling flowers.
There, Mystery, in dripping shroud,
Waves her dull sceptre round-
The bolt that bursts the thunder cloud
Rends not her cell profound.

Around that cell a feeble ray
Is sometimes seen to beam;
It leads the pilgrim from his way,
O'er fen, and moor, and stream.
So Hope, thy little taper shines,
Unquench'd by winter's blast:
So he that follows soon repines,
For he's deceived at last.'

SONNET TO SORROW.

Say, gentle Sorrow, tenant lone of night,
Where is thy mystic solitary bower?
Does Genius, there, display her beaming light,
And art thou govern'd by her fairy power?-
The vulgar soul his joy alone explores,

Where riot runs her clam'rous, noisy dance,
Or where supine eternal Dulness snores,

With senses bound in dark Oblivion's trance:
But fair refinement to thy power is given,

For thee hath youthful Genius struck the lyre;
Thou art the daughter pure of poet's heaven,
That first essay'd bright fancy to inspire;
Yes, Sorrow! in thy bower of drooping vines,

The star of fancy gleams and genius shines.'

The poem entitled 'Mississippian Scenery,' is of a totally different character, yet quite as respectable in its way. Mr. Mead has not endeavoured to enrich his verse with allusions to mythology, nor to make any display of learning, neither does he appeal to the reader's predelictions for subjects already associated with notions of poetry and romance; but aims (successfully, we think) at a poetical description of the most interesting features of our western states and territories, and a delineation of the future prospects of those regions.

The poem, he says, was chiefly the production of my contemplative hours, spent in various seclusions of solitude, where the smiles of nature upon the borders of a wilderness remote from the gay and giddy circles of society, were the principal objects on which my mind could expatiate with delight. And even in those wild retreats, where the eye is not deluded with the vain display of pride and ostentation, and where the innocent propensities of the heart are not encumbered with the imposing restrictions of fashion, etiquette, and false politeness, there is something highly interesting to the contemplative mind. The topographical features of the western country, and what belong to the vegetable kingdom, were objects calculated to enliven the gloom of solitude, and throw addi

t

208

ART. IV.-The Hermit in London, or Sketches of English Man

ners.

[From the Journal of Belles Lettres.]

RIGID ECONOMY.

"Thy nags-the leanest things alive-
So very hard thou lov'st to drive;
I heard thy anxious coachman say

It cost thee more in whips than hay.'

WHEN I see half starved cattle attached to a carriage, and

observe a constant succession and change of servants in the houses of the great,—when I regret to behold the unanswered petitions of the necessitous almost thrown at them, and remark that I never noticed a pauper relieved at a neighbour's door,-I am convinced that grinding economy, the slave of pride, is the cause of all this havoc to man and beast.

Where economy, however, is only the representative of honest poverty, or is more properly mere self-denial for some laudable purpose, for instance, to pay a parent's debts, to disencumber an estate for a son, or to provide for indigent relatives, and those who have natural ties upon us,-I honour those who are reduced to these abnegations, and I respect the motive which occasions them. But how few instances do we behold of self-denial, in order to rescue the name of a father or of a husband, whose ashes now repose in the tomb, from the infamy and the charge of injustice? How few fathers, like the virtuous Cremorne, consider the honour of a departed son identified with their own, and will allow no one to name him with a claim or with a reproach in his mouth! How few instances of parental, of conjugal, and of filial piety, exist in this respect! Nay, we rarely find people resort to self-denials in order to pay their own personal debts; whilst a title, or a senatorial privilege, saves them from arrest. Yet every day we see acts of barbarous, contemptible, and pinching penury, in order to pamper pride, to gild nothingness, to obtain transitory respect, which never can survive a perfect knowledge of the character, or rather, that kind of homage, of consideration, or deference which little minds pay to fine dress, fine furniture, to the skeletons of halfstarved cattle, and to pining and hungry livery men just hired, or just wearing out their month of warning.

Here we behold a haughty old maid, perhaps with honourable Miss tacked to her name, whose slender pittance would keep herself and waiting-woman in comfort, leaving a crust for the poor, or the tithe of her reverence for the noblest duties of humanity; but, in order that she may give a couple of routs, and be followed daily by half-fed footmen of six feet high, the waiting-maid and liveryman must keep lent all the year round, and the poor must be driven trembling from her door.

In another quarter of the town we have the widow of high life, whose late husband's debts and difficulties scarcely leave her enough with which to keep house; yet must her establishment be maintained-the same number of domestics, of horses, and of car

riages, to compass which the poor quadrupeds are half fed, and the bipeds are wholly unpaid, and either fed upon promises, or upon their savings in former places, being allowed to run on an account of board wages and standing wages without any certain time of payment for either.

Here, Miss Priscilla, whose Pa was a merchant, has fortune enough for house, for servants-male and female, for hospitality, and for charity; but, then, although her charms are either invisible to all but her own partial eye, or are declining apace, yet she may make a good match, and, as appearance is every thing, she must have her landau to sun herself in, and her men both in livery and out of it. For this purpose, the hospitable board must shrink into a sandwich and a glass of table-beer for self,-not at home, for poor relations, meagre fare for her domestics, and a sparing hand for her poor cattle: add to which, coachee converts the economical allowance of corn into ale or gin for himself, and trusts to the stimulus of the whip instead of hand-feeding to get his sorry animals on; whilst the poor, who blessed the sire, now anathematize the daughter, with famished countenances and with angry looks.

Knighthood has raised sir Robert above himself. He was once the faithful picture of an honest John Bull. Substantial fare furnished the plenteous board both above stairs and below; his friends, his neighbours, his clerks, and his servants, his porters and shopmen, his dependants and the poor, all partook of his generosity; and every thing flourished. Now, he fain would be the courtier, and would act and look the nobleman.

My lady too, has suffered a metamorphosis, since she was presented at court. Now, Botolph-lane smells offensive to her nose; St. Paul's church is an eye-sore to her quality; its matin bell an impertinent intrusion on her first sleep; she must have a house in some of the squares, (not Finsbury, for that has counting housesmoke in it, and savours of sugar and tobacco, of tea and indigo, of odious articles of traffic from the East and West Indies:) she must have her villa at Richmond or at Wimbledon, and her hothouse, conservatory, etcetera; not forgetting expensive dress and extravagant losses at play, in order to pay her footing amongst the nobility.

To meet all these expenditures, the open table is retrenched; state dinners are given in imitation of ministerial ones, but differing in this leading feature, that there-not a guest is asked, but from some motive of interest, public or private, not a dish but is paid for again and again; nor is there even a miserable rat about the house that does not bring his price with him. Clerks, relatives, and dependents, are either treated as inferiors, or wholly cut, the servants' stomachs are guaged by my lady's wants, in order to pay her play debts; the horses' appetites are measured by the hunger of coachmen and grooms, unaccustomed to half allowance or short commons, and who purloin the corn to make up the deficit; all is finery or misery, excess or starvation, (the latter always falling to

tional delights in the way of my poetic pastime. In tracing the scenery of the Mississippi, I have not confined myself to the shores of that river, but have endeavoured to give a general survey of the whole expanse of country watered by its concentrating branches.

'The regions through which I have stretched my perambulations seem particularly calculated to elicit reflection and interest imagination. A wide range for the exercise of curiosity lies open. The numerous monuments of aboriginal antiquity, and what seem to be the relics of the ancient arts and civilization of a people who have totally escaped the retentive grasp of history, present themselves as so many objects floating upon the surface of the dark ocean of oblivion. In looking back through the dim vista of departed ages, towards the early state of things in the western world, the mind is lost in the dark mazes of doubt and uncertainty. A kind of pensive melancholy is all that we can enjoy in reflecting on what might have occurred in former times in those immense regions, which have, from the creation of the world till within a few cen turies ago, been unknown to the nations of other continents. But as we look forward from the national eminence which we have already attained, the prospect before us is highly interesting, and calculated to awaken the most pleasing sensations of national pride and anxiety. A progressive emigration is daily stretching the western limits of our republic into the wilderness, and adding to the sovereignty, new sources of wealth and power.'

We extract the following as a specimen of the author's manner. 'From where dividing mountains meet the clouds,

In hoary grandeur and in sylvan shrouds,
Missouri travels, and remotely drains

Ten thousand floods from unfrequented plains.
Through shady realms his rapid torrents roar,
And wash unseen the wood-encumber'd shore.
From lands afar his darksome waters roll,
Through gloomy wilds where painted Indians stroll.
With fancy cheer'd, with solitude imprest,

I view those wide expansions of the West.
My wand'ring muse in depths of woods regales,
Where Sol and Cynthia only light the vales:
There in Columbia's regions wrapt in shade,
And dark with trees e'er since the world was made.
No lofty domes nor temples there are giv'n,
With glitt'ring spires high pointing up to heav'n.
There agriculture never found its way,
And beaming science never cast a ray.
There barb'rous nations still pursue their game,
And the rude Indian woos his tawny dame.
No gardens there, in flow'ry charms array'd,
Unfold their blossoms to the blooming maid;
No fruitful orchards rural charms display,
Nor sportive lambs in green savannas play.
But as I look beyond some future years,
The scene is chang'd; a brighter scene appears.
Columbia's bosom drops its rude attire,
And AGRICULTURE seems to triumph there,